Paths to peace

Letters to an anarchist - Part 4

This is the fourth installment in a series of letters between myself and

Elle Griffin

, exploring anarchy in practice. Previous exchanges can be found here:

• Part 1 by Elle Griffin

• Part 2 by Peter Clayborne

• Part 3 by Elle Griffin

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Dear Elle,

I think we are indeed looking at different versions of history. David Graeber, in his comprehensive volume The Dawn of Everything, outlines two popular but misleading views of history and modernity: 

• The Hobbesian view that life before modern civilization was nasty, brutish, and short, and that our violent natures must be corralled by institutions of control such as police and militaries, otherwise chaos and suffering would erupt and engulf us all. The necessary evils we now endure are a small price to pay for the pleasures we enjoy. Calls for improving society bely an ignorance about our privilege relative to our ancestors, and can thus be dismissed. 

• The perspective of Rousseau that views antiquity with a wistful nostalgia, romanticizing the “noble savages” who came before us, in god-like harmony with nature and each other, representing an Eden to which we could never hope to return. By comparison our modern lives may seem busy and beleaguered, and the best we can hope for are some tweaks to the system. We no longer live in the old world, so we’ve got to make do with what we have. 

As Christopher Boehm puts it, we seem doomed to play out an endless recycling of the war between “Hobbesian hawks and Rousseauian doves”: those who view humans as either innately hierarchical or innately egalitarian.

But both these views rest on myths about who we are, not on the facts of how people before us actually lived. Hobbes didn’t know a thing about prehistory, nor did he pretend to. His work was intentionally allegorical, as were those of his contemporaries. Meanwhile Rousseau was instrumental in responding to the indigenous critique of European society. Neither were willing to countenance any alternative to their way of living. 

Graeber offers a third way:

If the very essence of our humanity consists of the fact that we are self-conscious political actors, and therefore capable of embracing a wide range of social arrangements, would that not mean human beings should actually have explored a wide range of social arrangements over the greater part of our history?

He challenges us to consider that perhaps there is no such thing as “modernity.” Insisting on the uniqueness of our own moment means painting over all of human history (and pre-history) with the same brush. The anthropological record shows that change is the only constant, diversity the only common pattern. It’s unhelpful to generalize across all human societies as being one thing or another, for example warlike or peaceful. The truth is we’ve always been both. 

The Rotuman, a traditionally stateless people in the South Pacific north of Fiji, offer a helpful counter-example to the situation in Maui (by the way, I loved your fiction piece on that topic a while back!). 

From the Anarchy Works website: 

According to anthropologist Alan Howard, members of this sedentary society are socialized not to be violent. Cultural norms promote respectful and gentle behavior towards children. Physical punishment is extremely rare, and almost never intended to actually hurt the misbehaving child. Instead, Rotuman adults use shame instead of punishment, a strategy that raises children with a high degree of social sensitivity… Members maintain their standing and status in the group by being accountable, being sensitive to group opinion, and resolving conflicts. If some people acted in a way that we might expect in a society based on police and punishment, they would isolate themselves and thus limit their harmful influence.

Howard also brings up the “astonishing degree of autonomy” granted to children, mirrored in the way households, communities, and villages interact with each other. They avoid contact with their imposed government, and solve conflicts through mediation, facilitated by chiefs and elders, with the public apology holding the greatest weight. Households are free to switch between groups, so mediators cannot amass power as judges. Their murder rate is at least three times lower than in the US. 

This shows that police, prisons, and courts aren’t necessary for resolving conflicts. Peace can be maintained by other means. It also shows how important it is the way children are treated, and how powerful cultural norms can be in shaping conflict and its resolution. 

A couple more comparisons might be helpful here:

Two neighboring Zapotec communities (an indigenous nation within Mexico) have homicide rates of 3.4/100,000 and 18.1/100,000 respectively. What does La Paz, the more peaceful one, do differently? They don’t beat their children, they almost never beat their wives, and women enjoy economic independence. Children see less violence and use less violence in their play. A cross-cultural study on socialization found that “warm, affectionate socialization techniques correlate with low levels of conflict in society,” corroborating this approach. The differences between these two communities, alike except for cultural norms, illustrates that peace is a choice. 

The Semai and the Norwegians offer another complementary picture. Their homicide rates are both under 1/100,000, compared to 6.26 in the US and 20.20 in Russia. Norway’s government includes police and prisons, but there is a reliance on mediation rather than punishment to solve disputes (89% of which were solved without going to court in 2001). Norway has one of the lowest wealth gaps of any capitalist country, and their socialization of young people is relatively peaceful. The Semai, agriculturalists in Malaya, were stateless until colonialism. They use a gift economy, so wealth is evenly distributed. Like the La Paz Zapotec, the Semi don’t beat their children, do separate them when they fight, and also respect their autonomy. 

According to anthropologist Robert Dentan: 

Little violence occurs within Semai society. Violence, in fact, seems to terrify the Semai. A Semai does not meet force with force, but with passivity or flight. Yet, he has no institutionalized way of preventing violence — no social controls, no police or courts. Somehow a Semai learns automatically always to keep tight rein over his aggressive impulses.

The major forces that uphold Semai peacefulness seem to be an emphasis on learning self-control and the great importance accorded to public opinion in a cooperative society.

It might be tempting to say at this point, “well that’s great it works for them, but obviously the culture in the US is very different, so how could such practices work here?” It’s helpful for that reason to compare the Semai, a non-Western stateless people, with Norway, a Western society under a government. If such disparate groups can converge on a way to peace, surely we can too.

But the insistence on false equivalence also misses the point: the work of conflict resolution is precisely to develop such a peaceful culture. We do that in two ways: preemptively, by raising children nonviolently, and responsively, by dismantling systems that contribute to a violent culture. 

As Peter Gelderloos says: 

Much violent crime can be traced back to cultural factors. Violent crime, such as murder, would probably decrease dramatically in an anarchist society because most of its causes — poverty, televised glorification of violence, prisons and police, warfare, sexism, and the normalization of individualistic and anti-social behaviors — would disappear or decrease.

In order for this to make sense and not seem like pie-in-the-sky, rose-tinted idealism, it’s important to understand just how much violence in general, and crime in particular, is caused, not alleviated, by policing. If we understand crime “not as the violation of a code or statute, but as something causing harm or hurting social bonds,” as Alan Howard put it, then we begin to see how much of what is taken for granted and even actively encouraged in capitalist society is truly criminal, while how much of what is legally considered a crime need not be. 

So far, I hope it’s clear that by suggesting we do away with our violent institutions we don’t mean to leave nothing in their place. Conflicts need resolving, and peace needs maintaining. These are active endeavors that any group wanting to practice anarchy will spend lots of time and energy on getting right, getting wrong, and trying again.

All my best,

Peter Clayborne

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